Warmth,
The Goslings,
Boris,
Aphex Twin,
Black Boned Angel,
Can,
Coil,
Yellow Swans,
Growing,
Mammatus,
Medroxy Progesterone Acetate,
Oubliette,
Prurient,
Nurse With Wound,
Stars of The Lid,
Raccoo-oo-oon,
Robedoor,
Skullflower,
Roxanne Jean Polise,
Heavy Lids,
Tristeza,
Warhorse,
Steve Albini,
David Lynch,
Horror Films, And Horror Soundtracks From The 1920s-1970s
Robe. / Warmth (Split) 7 Inch - Reviewed By: Aquarius Music
A brand new, super limited head to head meeting between these two sonically similar underground noisemakers, trafficking in the dronier dreamier side of modern abstract 'noise'...
Warmth are up first, and deliver a murky chunk of melodic drone, like some classic pop song, that had been transferred from tape to tape about a thousand times, before being dubbed onto a 20 year old cassette left in the glove compartment of your car for the last decade, then played back at the wrong speed, a gloriously lugubrious glacial crawl, the muted melody pulsing beneath a constantly shifting sonic sea of low end thrum, distant field recordings and washed out hiss and buzz.
Robe counter with a sonically similar chunk of sound, haunting and playful at the same time, muddy melodies, and what sounds like horns, it actually sounds like some Carl Stalling cartoon music played at 16rpm, warbly and off kilter, murky and blurry, a drawled moonlit soundscape of twisted smeared ambience, muffled percussion, and mysteriously fragmented melodies.
Packaged in a super elaborate multi paneled sleeve, printed with metallic silver ink on black, sealed with a black wax seal and including a purple and black on black insert.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Robe./Warmth (Split) 7 Inch - Reviewed By: James
Warmth offers a hollow, swaying and moody piece that is probably as heavy as he has ever gone, ending in subtle ringing. Guitar and trombone bleak ambiance from Robe., would work perfect in a horror film. Offset printed silver on black linen paper sleeves, hand-cut into a cross shape, folded and sealed with a wax stamp in an edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.
Medroxy Progesterone Acetate starts things off with what sounds like synths and home made electronics processing a meat slicer, which happens to be connected to your ears, slowly taking what it needs to make a sandwich out of your senses. Robe flows from the deepest fibers of your subwoofers, making all of the magnets in your house rattle and the tar in your lungs release the cancer. This cycle of alternating styles repeats for nearly an hour over 5 tracks until your mind is destroyed. Excellent dark split that would make someone like H.P. Lovecraft a fan of noise! Comes in sealed mylar bag with laser printed insert and labeled disc. Artwork by Robe./aq. Limited to 40 copies.
Glacial - Reviewed By: Everyneurotic
"Very well done and executed, it totally creates the atmosphere and mood the music intends to do; it's sort of quiet noise in line with wolf eyes' river slaughter or hair police's constantly terrified but without the pretentiousness and without being boring mixed with the calmer, less metal side of sunn o))) or a darker growing. it's really cool, the trombone is great idea and you use it the right way, and for this being your first work in this setting it's really good. hope you keep expanding on that sound."
Glacial - Reviewed By: Alex Van Heinous
"Robe: glacial. A very fitting title for this album. it's hard to actually describe this record, because anything I say about it is going to make it sound like its not a very important record. it's slow, methodical, dark, and maybe a bit boring, but I don't mean that in a bad way. you can put this on in the background as ambient music, but that doesnt really give the music the kind of attention it probably deserves. what actually is going on here is a calm before a storm kind of thing. it's ambient music, but its so dark and depressing that just putting it on and not paying attention will probably start to make you alter your train of thought. it's cold, unsettling, and sad and will affect people without them really noticing it. Or at least it did that to me. Winter comes on and is another appropriately-titled track as its very cold and uh wintery. The song is very very slow and the bass totally sounds frozen in a block of ice while the guitar sounds like its trying to chip away the ice. The trombone is implemented very well, never overplayed, and almost always coming in at a moment when the music requires precise emotional impact. This track is utterly jaw-dropping in its simple yet unique approach, deconstructing then reconstructing and deconstructing for the course of a track. Ends in a fit of cold noise. everything seems behind some layer that makes everything sound duller and less exciting than it should be: but then again this is doom drone. probably better appreciated while on drugs anyway.
The next track has acoustic guitar and warmer tones. Makes my whole body feel nice. the next track is where the guitar stands out more and it seems to really tell a story. it's very angry. Detached follows and is a nice meditative slow piece where silence is used to great extent. cinder is another nice track that is maybe a bit too noisey in parts but is still an awesome wall of sound. Finally wither comes in and shocks me right away because i'm not expecting another wall of sound. I'm almost disappointed at how noisey and harsh it is but it's actually a two part song as the song eventually winds to an epic drone. Very nice.
Inevitabley this will be compared to sunn o))) but robe seems to take a different approach by actually writing songs. the production is amazing and emphasises the low frequency bass, while the guitarist is inventive and unique, going from soft high pitched startling parts to sunn o))) type walls of doomy sounds to just letting his guitar feedback. the trombone is very sad. there is also what sounds like keyboard and other instruments on this (unless the keyboards are just guitar affects or something else?), and they all work well to create a dark cold sound. the dynamics and the way the musicians interact is endless in its explorative excitement and almost the whole album is flawless. this is ambient music that should be listened to and studied not just put on for droney purposes but either way you listen to it its a very wonderful album and easily amongst the best i've heard in this genre."
Flesh - Reviewed By: Alex Van Heinous
"Robe.'s Flesh - Is it just the nature of doomy bands to constantly change? Though I have not heard all of robe.'s output what i have heard, Glacial and songs on Myspace, they definitely seem to channel fellow doomer Boris by refusing to stand still in their musical innovations and hard-to-categorize doom. Instead of being dark and droney the entire time there are actual moments of brightness. Instead of working as strictly ambient background music the songs here are immediate and force your attention. And most of all instead of being doom drone what we have here is something almost industrial.
There are drums now and vocals too (the one annoyance I found with the production is the vocals seem buried at times) and ideas are all over the map. the songs start and go through many different stages of change without ever going back to a chorus or anything. somehow it seems to work. the production, besides the annoyance i just stated, is impenetrable and the annoyance i stated was probably intentional anyway. The guitars sound trebly and evil, the bass is still very low, and there appears to be keyboards or noisy effects everywhere on the recording. But the star of the album and robe in general still seems to be the trombone. It sounds better than ever here.. it is at once sad and hopeful. Film soundtrackesque. Creepy but comforting. An interesting innovation that continues not to sound forced but completely appropriate for Robe.
The beats are usually simple but catchy and the lyrics are mostly hard to hear. I have got to give props to the cover of the Yardbirds 'For Your Love'. Though I wonder why it's missing the drums and vocals of the rest of the album. I have to say that it's a very hilarious cover. Yardbirds as doom. Fucking beautiful. Great little album.
..01555/71/02/1555202017_m.jpg">
Flesh - Review By: Alex of Emofag
Originally In French here:
http://emofag.net/2007/06/30/robe-flesh-autoprod/
(Translated poorly through free online service below)
One will say what one wants but about Myspace but it is nevertheless a good means of getting to know small independent bands whose fame, without the assistance of the aforesaid site, would never have exceeded the limits of their regions.
I discovered this group recently and I must acknowledge that they have struck me well. After having taken contact with them, according to councils' of ComAtose, the bass player of the trio, I got "Flesh" their fifth album.
In two years, they have made not less than nine full length albums and two splits. Very productive guys!
The magic of this album lies in the fact that it has all the ingredients to be a professional album. Long ambient beaches and delicate melodies. Parts that have the resemble limps of rate/rhythm. All these things impose coldness. Songs with presence in homeopathic amounts. Yet this disc has the small trick which makes one arrive at the end of the 7 titles (which composes without problems) not being boring and that becoming almost easy listening at the end of two or three turns in the turntable. An album to be avoided however during the meal of Christmas or the birthday of a small child. This disc takes to you where one does not expect it to and its interest increases play after play. These three Indiana musicians have a great faculty to cause a multitude of images rich and varied in the head of their listeners, while avoiding the facilities of the kind. A good small album to be discovered.
3 new releases soon, puzz009 by SOMATIC RESPONSES, puzz010 1500 FREE CD (Mike dred, DMX Krew, Murcof,...) + puzz011 a collaboration with In vitro records (Subjex, Krumble, Etschaberry, ALF, TEP, Brainsucked):
Lauderdale "Life's A Beach" CDR now available. 40 minutes of grim doom sludge mixed with harsh metal and high voltage electronics. *First pressing of only 66 hand numbered copies* Only $7.00 (postage-paid)
..
..
..
